Healthcare Hullabaloo: Goldfinger

Goldfinger. He's the man, the man with Midas touch.

1964’s “Goldfinger” is arguably, the best James Bond Movie ever. It had it all: Sean Connery(of course) as British Secret Agent 007, the tricked out silver Aston Martin DB5 with machine guns and and ejection seat, the mute, hat-tossing assassin Odd Job, the sexy bad-girl-turned-good-by-James-Bond Pussy Galore (How did they get away with that name in 1964?), and, of course, the fantastic uber-villian Auric Goldfinger.

Mr. Goldfinger had a plan to corner the world gold market by infiltrating Fort Knox, Kentucky. And, what a plan it was! He was going to use a team of female aerobatic pilots to spray nerve gas over the Fort, a high-powered laser beam to break into the vault, and a nuclear bomb to contaminate the US Gold Reserve.

This was the coolest movie of 1964.

In 1964, Auric Goldfinger was considered an evil genius. Today, Mr. Goldfinger would be thought of as a schmuck. After all, in 2011, we know that there are much easier ways to rip off Uncle Sam – like selling phony power wheelchairs or non-existent AIDS medicine.

.According to a recent government report, Medicare and Medicaid fraud amounts to around 60 Billion dollars a year. Yes, that’s Sixty Billion with a ‘B’. Each and every year we have 60 Billion health care dollars that disappear down the rabbit hole, and never go towards paying for health care.

How much money is this? Well, roughly, each and every American citizen is paying around $200 a year to finance this fraud.

Or, to look at it another way, every year the amount of money that we lose to Medicare and Medicaid fraud is roughly equivalent to 40% of the value of the gold currently held in Fort Knox.

And this money is being stolen from us with something as low tech as a CMS-1500 Insurance claim form.

No laser beams, nerve gas or atomic bombs required.

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